The statements in this section merely provide background information related to the present disclosure. Accordingly, such statements are not intended to constitute an admission of prior art.
Marker pens, magic markers, or felt tip pens are used to apply a colored ink to paper or other medium. The ink can be used decoratively, for example, by a child coloring upon a page. The ink can be used instructively, for example, high-lighting a portion of printed type for quick reference later. Colored ink upon a page has a number of uses.
A marker pen includes a storage medium or reservoir for storing ink for future use. The storage medium protects the stored ink from drying out before being used. According to one example, a storage medium can include a felt cylinder encased along the outer diameter of the cylinder with a plastic sleeve. The felt cylinder connects or is unitary with a writing tip, often an extension of the felt extending out of the pen. According to another example, a small metal tube can hold ink with a structure for dispensing the ink to a writing tip.
Springs are known to be used in ball-point pens to selectively extend or retract a writing tip of the pen. According to one embodiment, a spring is situated around a plastic ink cylinder, and a button mechanism on the side of the pen distant from the writing tip is depressed to cycle the pen between binary settings: writing tip extended and writing tip withdrawn. The cyclic operation of the pen is enabled by a force transformer device near the button mechanism. Force transformer devices are known in the art and translate the force of the button being depressed into a rotational force within the transformer. Such a force transformer device can be described as a rotating catch button pack. A carrier device within the force transformer device rotates with each depression, and the carrier device includes features that mate with reverse matching features upon a selective extension device. As the carrier device turns, the mating features upon the carrier either match with tip extended features or with tip withdrawn features upon the selective extension device. The turning of the carrier device makes the mating features upon the carrier alternate between the features of the selective extension device. In this way, repeated depression of the button cycles the ball point pen between the binary settings.
According to another embodiment, a ball-point pen writing tip can be extended by pushing a slider button toward the writing end of the device. The slider button is spring loaded into the retracted position, and the user depresses the spring when extending the writing tip. When the slider button reaches the fully extended position, a catch is activated holding the slider button in the fully extended position. The catch can be released in one embodiment by a release button or in another embodiment by depression of another slider button.